With the Republican Party in a state of turmoil following Mitt Romney’s loss three weeks ago, we begin today’s show with a guest who was once one of the most influential Republican strategists. In 1969, Kevin Phillips wrote the groundbreaking book, "The Emerging Republican Majority." Newsweek described the book as the "political bible of the Nixon administration." After a series of best-selling books on the Bush family, Wall Street and the American theocracy, Phillips is looking back at the roots of the American Revolution in his new book, "1775: A Good Year for Revolution." "What happened that set the United States in motion in the mid-1770s is still relevant in some ways, because what it showed was that you sometimes have to have a lot of very disagreeable politics to make progress, that you don’t get anywhere by having all kinds of nice slogans and by trying to barter every difference with a cliché and pretend that all’s well and the United States is in wonderful shape," Phillips says. "The United States is not in wonderful shape, and it needs to get back some of that spunk that it had when people were willing to talk very bluntly about harsh and tough measures." [includes rush transcript]

An explosive new documentary looks at a case once referred to as "the crime of the century": the Central Park Five. Many people have heard about the case, but far too few know that innocent men were imprisoned as a result. The film tells the story of how five black and Latino teenagers were arrested in 1989 for beating and raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. Media coverage at the time portrayed the teens as guilty and used racially coded terms like "wolf pack" to refer to the group of boys accused in the attack. Donald Trump took out full-page ads in four city newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty so they could be executed. However, the convictions of the five were vacated in 2002 when the real rapist came forward and confessed to the crime, after the five defendants had already served sentences of almost seven to 13 years. New York City is refusing to settle a decade-long civil lawsuit brought by the men. And now lawyers for the city are seeking access to footage gathered for the new film. We speak to one of the Central Park Five, Raymond Santana; filmmaker Sarah Burns; and journalist Natalie Byfield. [includes rush transcript]

DN! In Depth

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — The corporate television newscasts spend more and more time covering the increasingly disruptive, costly and at times deadly weather. But they consistently fail to make the link between extreme weather and climate change.